After putting some serious time into the Surface Book... I love this damn thing!

[TLRtheory]

I had a lot of reservation about the Surface Book. After getting a Surface Pro 3 and finding that I really disliked the size and constant fan issues, I got a Surface 3.

The Surface 3 was a fantastic experience for me. Very thin and light... actually even lighter than the Surface RT1/2, making it the smallest Surface ever. But it did everything I needed competently. Handled my coding like a champ, battery life was astounding, there was no fan to speak of I didn't have to worry about 10 minutes in Edge turning my tablet into a roaring monstrosity, and while I wasn't a big gamer, it handled Windows Store games like Order & Chaos Online and Modern Combat 5 just fine... and even kept up with me in a recent college course that required me to use SketchUp for some 3D landscape creation. I was amazed at how far Atom-powered machines have come since the days of those worthless Aspire netbooks.

The thought of getting something even larger than the Surface Pro 3 when I didn't like the SP3's size seemed like it would backfire... but there was something drawing me to this. So I bought it.

I think this might be the single most satisfying piece of computer hardware I've ever owned.

Keyboard is spectacular, trackpad is spectacular, I see none of the weird failure to detach issues I got when demoing early units in the Microsoft Store, performance is so nice that I'm finding that I care about gaming and video editing more... and I don't know if I'm just ferociously lucky, but it's been absolutely crashless (save for one that happened the first day while attempting a ludicrous amount of updates). I thought that 3-4hr of keyboard detached battery life would simply not be enough, but it's been more than sufficient in my daily meetings/lectures, and I actually found that I like the size too.

Only regret I have is that I went with the 256GB/i5/8GB/dGPU instead of the 512GB/i7/16GB/dGPU.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Good experience, nice to know that these devices can work as intended

 

[AL-Maqdad AL-Lawati]

I just owned SB for past two weeks. This device is prefect. I was worried about many issues that I have read on the internet. But, I never experienced any issue at all. The device fantastic. so powerful, that I never thought that I will be able to games such GTA5 and METAL GEAR SOLID V on FHD resolution and it works on battery mode. I went for 512GB/i7/16GB/dGPU

 

[HammerBlue]

Yeah, I had the SP3 for about two years (had MBPs for five years before that) and loved it--mostly. I also was bothered by the constant fan issues. After updating to Windows 10 and experiencing frequent BSODs, I started to not recommend Surface devices anymore to friends. It was with a bit of trepidation that I got the Surface Book (512GB/i7/16GB/dGPU) about five weeks ago to replace the SP3.

I have to say that I'm really, really loving it. It's been absolutely solid with no crashes at all, and I have yet to hear the fan come on. I program on it and run three VMs simultaneously, while having multiple, multiple browser tabs open without any issues. I have yet to game on it, but I'm sure it'd handle that easily. It's restored my faith in Microsoft and will keep me on Windows longer.

I'm saving up right now to buy a Surface Book for the wife, and a Surface 3 and SP4 for the kids. Hopefully they'll fix the remaining annoyances. For me, the only one I'm experiencing is the slow WiFi issue.

I, too, agree that the keyboard and trackpad are spectacular. Finally a non-Apple keyboard and trackpad that I really love!

 

[zerospace-net]

I would say that after nearly a year, the Surface Book is finally a mostly solid device. I'm sad that it took so long to get it to this point, but I give MS credit for working through the worst bugs, even if it did take them what feels like forever for someone who bought this machine on day 1 (I think I experienced more BSoDs than I'd ever seen since Win98se). I finally committed to the SB and said goodbye to my trusty Surface Pro 3 & dock combo a couple of days ago when I shipped it off to my mother to replace her seriously old laptop.

Surface Book is finally a really good machine, and it feels good to finally be able to say that. (Of course, in a few hours when my SB is warm and has about 20% battery left and has only been sitting closed on my dining room table, I'll be cussing at it again! haha!).

 

[AbsoluteZerow]

The growing pains of the Surface Book were unbearable for me when it first launched. The amount of issues I had on three Surface Book's ultimately led me to return it and shelve the idea of having a Surface Book. Nearly a year later and another Surface Book purchase, I'm really glad things are working as intended. It's definitely had a lot of issues and one could only imagine how well it would have sold if it came out of the gate flawless. I would love metrics on how many people returned their launch Surface Book's and bought something else due to issues.

If anyone needs a refresher on just how BAD the Surface Book was during its launch, just check out this infamous thread I started:
http://forums.windowscentral.com/microsoft-surface-book/391012-10.htm#post3487677

 

[zerospace-net]

I would love metrics on how many people returned their launch Surface Book's and bought something else due to issues.

I would love to see this as well -- I would think it would be very, very interesting to see how many units were returned. Then, I'd like to see how many of those same people bought new ones sometime this year as the bugs got fixed. I kept my SB through the pain, because I figured mine wasn't as bad as some of the horror stories I was reading. I didn't trust it at all, though, through the process -- in fact, I was honestly waiting for the day it just flat out crashed completely to the point where the OS wasn't bootable, and I'd have to attempt a full recovery from USB media. Thankfully, that never happened.

AbsoluteZerow, which model did you buy originally? Which one do you have now? Are they the same?

Funny enough, I've come to really like my Surface Book, even when it screws up and ticks me off (much less often than it was back in Feb. or so of this year). At this point, I'm planning to keep my Surface Book for awhile. I'm not sure I'll be looking to upgrade when the next one arrives (next year I'm guessing?), either.

 

[AbsoluteZerow]

I would love to see this as well -- I would think it would be very, very interesting to see how many units were returned. Then, I'd like to see how many of those same people bought new ones sometime this year as the bugs got fixed. I kept my SB through the pain, because I figured mine wasn't as bad as some of the horror stories I was reading. I didn't trust it at all, though, through the process -- in fact, I was honestly waiting for the day it just flat out crashed completely to the point where the OS wasn't bootable, and I'd have to attempt a full recovery from USB media. Thankfully, that never happened.

AbsoluteZerow, which model did you buy originally? Which one do you have now? Are they the same?
... .

Same one I have now, i5/256GB/8GB RAM/Nvidia GPU